Pulitzer_ A Life in Politics, Print, and Power - James McGrath Morris [84]
Although long-winded, a bit showy, and at times wandering off the track, the articles were the equal of any in this genre published in New York newspapers. Dana even granted Pulitzer a byline, reinforcing his success in English-language journalism. In fact, the articles marked Pulitzer’s complete transformation into an American. Never once mentioning his foreign birth, Pulitzer had opened his series of articles proclaiming, “The more I see of Europe, the more American I become.” He confessed his love for the opera houses, museums, castles, and new palaces of Europe. But he also wrote, “However great the treasures of art, I prefer the treasures of liberty.” Expressing a sentiment similar to that which brought his brother Albert to the United States, Joseph added, “I like still more our plain land without the glare of royalty or nobility.”
The articles in the New York Sun, though glamorous, brought Pulitzer no closer to finding suitable employment, a more pressing problem now that he was married. But while languishing in New York, Pulitzer heard that the Dispatch, a struggling evening paper in St. Louis, was going to be auctioned off at a bankruptcy sale. He knew the paper well. Stilson Hutchins and Charles Johnson had taken turns owning the Dispatch, but neither had made a go of it. Pulitzer telegraphed Johnson as well as John Marmaduke, a former Confederate general who edited an agricultural magazine and had discovered a new lost cause as an agitator against the increasing power of railroads. Pulitzer told them that he and his bride were leaving for St. Louis and that they were to meet him at the Lindell Hotel.
The St. Louis at the end of the train ride was greatly changed from the one that had greeted Pulitzer thirteen years earlier. It was now a thriving industrial and commercial city whose air was so thick with smoke that only a dome or two could be seen through the haze from the train as it crossed the Eads Bridge. When Johnson and Marmaduke met Pulitzer at the hotel, he revealed his plans. He told them he had returned to take a shot at buying the Dispatch. The men were enthusiastic—especially Johnson, who had long pressed Pulitzer to abandon his off-and-on legal career. “I zealously urged him to embark on the newspaper business,” said Johnson.
Encouraged, Pulitzer next went to see Daniel Houser, the part owner of the St. Louis Globe-Democrat, to whom he had sold the AP membership four years earlier. For several evenings Houser and Pulitzer worked on the financial numbers. Houser guessed that Pulitzer might win the auction with a bid of $1,500 to $1,700. Pulitzer had $5,000 in savings, so at that price the paper would be within his reach. Operating the paper, however, was an unresolved question. If Pulitzer could not eliminate its daily deficit, his cash would last only seventeen weeks.
In the early morning of December 9, 1878, the day of the auction, Pulitzer strolled from the Lindell Hotel to the nearby courthouse—a Greek Revival building with a cast-iron dome modeled after St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome. By the time he reached the courthouse, a small crowd was already milling around the east side; its members were doing their best to stay warm in the frigid air—this December was one of the coldest months since the city had begun keeping records. Pulitzer knew just about everyone among the thirty or so men, and they, him. “The tall, graceful figure and pale Mephistophelean face of Mr. Joseph Pulitzer, with its expression of keen irony, was the object